Award-winning branding, rebranding and package design
How brands outshine, outlast and outperform their competition
After successfully rebranding several non-profits, I discovered something: Non-profits think of themselves as a different breed of organization. Are non-profits different? Yes. But, in the most fundamental areas of branding, they arenāt. I first learned this when I rebranded a city in the Midwest. Twelve months after the rebrand, they experienced a 500% increase in …
Jimmy Buffett, world-renowned singer-songwriter, musician, author, and businessman, died on September 1st, 2023, leaving a legacy of “island escapism,” music, and fun in the sun. Factually, he was the ultimate social media master, using story, art, continuity, and differentiation to create his empire long before social media was a thing. The All-You-Can-Eat Jimmy Buffett Jimmy …
In an age where everyone’s screaming for attention, most brands sound like broken records, replacing āclear brand messagingā with something ācool and clever.ā “We’re the best,” they shout. “Choose us!” But here’s a disruptive thought: What if the secret sauce isn’t in shouting louder but speaking more clearly? The Myth of Differentiation: Brand Messaging Liberated …
Killer statistic: When it comes to brand architecture strategies, about 80-90% of new products, including line extensions, fail. Let’s play a game: Name something more challenging than trying to match socks from a laundry load. If you said, ābeing an physician in need of the brand architecture necessary for a successful brand extension,” then ding, …
In an expansive universe, standing out is a brutal necessity. Real business mavericks who dominate their market know this as a “Power Formula” for disruption and defiance. Fail to define your narrative, and the market will craft one for youāoften to your detriment. Unfortunately, most businesses are living this nightmare: a half-told story or one …
How do todayās wealthiest entrepreneurs drive business growth? After spending decades studying this and building million-dollar brands and billion-dollar unicorns, one approach stood out. Elon Musk calls it the āfirst principleā thinking. Itās enabled him to innovate the industries of automobiles and space travel and to become one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs on the planet. …
Welcome to the future of branding. Branding is no longer just about selling, it’s about resonating. Recently, CEO Magazine introduced a critical conversation and published āWords of Wisdom from the Worldās Greatest Branding Experts,ā with quotes from 20 remarkable entrepreneurs and thought leaders, including Gary Vaynerchuk, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. …
As someone who has spent years studying (and working with) some of the best entrepreneurs and their businesses, I can tell you there is no one-size-fits-all approach to success. As a practitioner in the transformative power of entrepreneurship, I am often stunned at how the best entrepreneurs create ground-breaking innovations and disrupt entire industries. In …
An entrepreneurial powerhouse and acclaimed artist, the Taylor Swift Brand is driven by 33-year-old Taylor Swift, an entrepreneur and artist approaching an estimated net worth of a staggering billion dollars, doesn’t just have a brand ā she is the brand. And check this out: Taylor is the second richest self-made woman in music. An elusive …
I wanted to share the most powerful brand strategy I know. I call it EYEBALL HIJACKING. As businesses, we must stand out from the crowd and become impossible to ignore.Ā My Most Powerful Brand Strategy: Eyeball Hijacking We must hijack eyeballs and differentiate ourselves from competitors.Ā Because the most memorable brands challenge old ideas. Sure, …
Elon Musk. Independent. Wealthy. Innovative. Welcome to the high-stakes world of branding ā a world that’s as unpredictable as Wall Street on Monday morning yet as ripe for disruption as the dawn of e-commerce.Ā But you, youāre not just any player. You’re a trailblazer, an Elon Musk in a world of old-school industrialists.Ā A Mr. …
When it comes to developing a social media strategy, people don’t buy the best product, they buy the best-marketed product. Now, let me share a story that’ll knock your socks off and make your jaw hit the floor so hard it’ll need to be surgically reattached. Iām talking about 2018 when Ryan Reynolds purchased a …
Businesses today are asking the wrong questions to master storytelling. Business today must know how to frame their conversations. Otherwise, people still look at the world through the same lens and come to the same old conclusions. Having the wrong conversations about their roles and brands costs businesses relevance, sustainability, and customers. Businesses today must …
A few day’s ago, the world chose to celebrate International Women’s Day. Over my career, I have had the honor and pleasure of working with female entrepreneurs, business owners and CEOs. Why I Celebrate International Women’s Day Besides the sheer enjoyment of building businesses into household names and multi-million-dollar brands, I have had the sheer …
The greatest branding challenge of your career? Branding yourselfĀ to become the most interesting brand in the world. Why? So when people need you and your expertise, you are who they think about. And call. How do you take droll facts and turn them into something compelling? Something that makes people stop and take notice? Something …
A few weeks ago, I wrote about an incredible cybersecurity industry rebrandĀ in an article: In 1936, Alan Turing, the father of computing, wrote a paper largely ignored by the cybersecurity industry (while being embraced by the perpetrators of malware and ransomware, a multi-billion dollar industry). Fact: In 2021 alone, 66% of organizations globally were the …
I recently spoke with Matt George, an executive coach providing Leadership Education at Harvard to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He’s someone who’s raised tens of millions of dollars for a non-profit he ran for 30 years. Matt is a rare breed who unites empathy and compassion with hungry entrepreneurialism. In our discussion, one thing …
What if you could get a standing ovation, whether in a conference hall, a boardroom, a sales meeting, or during a pitch to a roomful of VCs? Is it about standing out, being different, and making an impact that leaves a lasting impression on your audience? Of course. But it demands a few more tools …
Don Draper’s pitch for Kodak’s slide projector, “The Wheel,” is considered by many to be the best pitch in advertising history. Kodak executives had decided to call their invention āThe Wheel,ā a move Draper considered a major misstep. In the hit television show āMad Menā set in the ā60s in an era when cigarette smoke …
Thereās a problem in branding today, and the #1 reason why small businesses fail: a lack of understanding the difference between branding and marketing and their actual relationship to sales. Ask Gary Vaynerchuk and heāll tell you: āThe difference between branding and sales is simple. Are you trying to convert or are you trying to …
Whatever happened to the best ads for companies? Remember ads like āGot milk?ā or āPlop, plop. Fizz, fizz. Oh, what a relief it is.ā for Alka Seltzer? Or the timeless and always welcome āJust do itā ads for Nike or Appleās āIām a Mac. Iām a PC.ā campaign? When did the best ads take a …
Storytelling gets a bad name. People in finance and accounting give it an even worse name. Why? Too often, they lack the three most valuable skills in business: The Wolf of Wall Street showed the darkest side of this. More commonly, talking with a finance person is a dreadfully long-winded conversation that’s stiffer than a …
To hear some CEOs, one might think there were no different types of brands. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recently, I outlined the 4 types of entrepreneurs I’ve encountered in four decades of helping businesses grow and building brands, generating over $7 billion in revenue worldwide. Businesses that don’t nail this end up …
While I am not a fan of the term āYouTube Guru,ā when the shoe fitsā¦ What if you could get inside the mind of someone whoās gotten 300 million views online? Who, in the last month, has gotten over 55 million views online? Thatās exactly what I am sharing with you in today’s brand-new video interview. …
1984. The year Apple aired its now-famous “1984” Super Bowl advertisement, the title of George Orwell’s famous book about a dystopian future, and the year new recruitment and staffing firm, First Search, opened its doors. It was after having completed my Masterclass that Al approached me. “David, nobody understands the power of branding to do …
